Film Review: Peelers (2016)

A small town strip club owner must defend her bar, her strippers and her life when violent infected patrons show up on the final closing night and all hell breaks loose.

REVIEW:

As many horror fans know, there are some movies that aren’t exactly good but still are entertaining to watch. There’s a sense of fun to some “bad” movies that makes them endearing despite their flaws. One such movie was Zombie Strippers, a comedy horror flick that the filmmakers obviously had their tongues planted firmly in cheek when they made it. It didn’t take itself too seriously, and it was a fun ride. It was by no means a classic like Evil Dead II, but it worked for what it was. When I was watching Peelers, I kept thinking back to Zombie Strippers because it was another zombie flick that takes place in a strip club. eelers even tried to mix in some humor in the same way.

Peelers centers on Blue Jean who took over the ownership of a strip club after the passing of her husband. She had been a stripper at one point herself. She had recently sold the club to a greedy jerk, and the movie takes place on the club’s last night before it closes permanently. It’s also the same night that a group of Mexican mine workers come into celebrate. They just discovered some oil while on the job, and they’re planning on using this find to make themselves wealthy. Unfortunately, the oil that they’re covered in is not what it seems, and it begins turning them into something very zombie-like. Once they begin to transform, Blue Jean and her workers find themselves in a desperate struggle to survive.

One of things I liked about the movie is that it gave us a fairly interesting main character. It lets you know she had once been an accomplished baseball player, cop, and stripper before owning the Club, which helps give her some depth. She’s a tough person, and there’s a believable reason for her to be. There’s many other facets to her personality that we get to see. We get to see her be caring and compassionate as well as be sarcastic and threatening when the situation calls for it. I was surprised to see that the film actually aimed at making her a fully realized three dimensional character. In a story centering on strippers fighting zombies, it was refreshing to see the filmmakers actually tried to give us a female protagonist that’s as well developed as Blue Jean (that’s not a joke about her physical attributes!).

The movie also takes its time to let you get to know some of the other characters. You get a sense that these people, Blue Jean, the strippers, the bouncer, and the bartender, are almost like family to each other. These were characters that, with a few exceptions, you’ll want to see survive. There was a problem in that the movie began to drag a little because it spent too much time on showing us these relationships before getting to the action.

One of the best parts of the movie was it’s gore. This movie was not shy about showing us the red stuff. There were a couple of original kills that were easy to appreciate. The practical effects looked really great. If you love a good gore gag, this movie does deliver. There was a scene or two where it was obvious the effects team used CGI for blood splatter. The computer graphics weren’t of the highest quality, which detracted from those scenes a little.

The film was hurt by the fact that we had some uneven acting. While Wren Walker as Blue Jean and Caz Odin Darko as the bouncer Remy gave decent performances, a lot of the remaining cast was kind of bad. The script’s over reliance on one liners, some of which were groan inducing, didn’t help matters either. Some of the humor is forced and doesn’t work, and there’s logic gaps in the story that hurt the finished product.

Overall, Peelers is an enjoyable movie if you can get past its flaws. It’s fun, gory, and kind of ridiculous. If that appeals to you, then give this movie a shot. There’s worse ways to spend your time.

One comment

Like the reviewer this film made me think back to Zombie Strippers a dumb fun movie that gave you exactly what the title suggested. Peelers is dumb but it’s not much fun. The pacing is terrible. Many of the F/X are abysmal (emphasis on the CGI blood). From scene to scene the direction ranges from highly competent to ‘did a child shoot/edit this’? The movie is at it’s worst during action scenes and kills… the money shots mostly aren’t, they’re often visually incoherent.

The plus side is three or four clever minutes when you can stop asking the consuming question: ‘why don’t they just leave?’ Unfortunately there’s another hour and a half to sit through between those bite sized bit of entertainment.

There are worse B movies but there are also a lot that are infinitely better than Peelers in each and every way. I’d call this movie marginally below average.